No agencies coordination in 8-lane project, says High court

The division bench comprising Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice V Bhavani Subbaroayan made the above observation on perusing the flow chart submitted by NHAI about the steps taken and the stage, at which, the various assessments/study are as on date.

While Assistant Solicitor General G Rajagopalan argued that when none of the statutory provisions have been violated, any apprehension raised at this stage is premature, Justice Sivagnanam sought to know at which stage will the environment impact assessment study be done. He said in the event of the study negating the project, to what extent would all this preliminary work of marking the land and sub-dividing them for land acquisition work out to.

The judge also wondered besides acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement of land owners, is it not important to find the effect of the project on fertile land. Counsel P Raja appearing for a landowner, submitted that while sequential steps as per the Bharatmala-I, in which the project falls ought to be followed, many of the provisions like clearance of Public Investment Board (PIB), CAG audit of project implementation and prior environment clearance from Ministry of Environment and Forests and other such clearances have not been obtained.

Earlier, another counsel T R Balu presented a paper of the amendments that have been proposed and the recommendations that followed thereafter. The report said, “Since the considerable portion of the road is passing through the hilly terrain, a separate study on the impact of the proposed alignment on mountain ecosystem shall be carried out by a reputed Government organisation like NEERI”.

Another recommendation said considering the various representations against land acquisition submitted by local people and writ petitions filed in the Court of Law, EAC recommends carrying out a comprehensive socio-economic assessment with emphasis on impact of ongoing land acquisition on local people living around the proposed alignment from reputed institution of the government of India.

The said note also sought details of the non-forest areas being reduced to change in Right of Way (RoW) from 90m to 70m/50m. Detailed land used for the revised RoW and its buffer in 10 km radius to be provided, traffic projection vis-à-vis revised RoW needs to be provided, the ToR granted to this project are subject to the outcome of ongoing legal proceedings at Madras High Court and other courts and tribunals and provide compilation of road kill data on existing roads (National and State highways) in the vicinity of the proposed project.

Based on this, the bench sought the ASG to confirm the authenticity of the said report and proceeded with hearing the batch of writ petitions moved by the land owners, whose lands are sought to be acquired for the project.